# The haze and the Heart of New Wave
I was assembling a radio playlist and thought to include this Simple Minds song…
And then I pulled it up and played it. And I was reminded of how it was hazy. Like the fog blanketing a river in scotland. There was something out there, something intriguing, something that demanded my attention, but I couldn’t quite see it clearly.
And then came that change… It starts around 1:02. When you expect the track to amp up, go for victory, it drops down, becomes subtle, focuses on the heart as opposed to the genitalia. It’s magic.
I bought the album because of “Promised You a Miracle,” which you heard on the radio dial way up at 106.7, KROQ, now rebranded the Roq of the ’80’s, even though it had previously been the last free format station on the Los Angeles rock radio dial.
This was something new, this was top 40 of the new wave. That’s right, the playlist was short, and repetitive, but only new songs were played, mostly from the U.K., which had leapfrogged a U.S. decimated by the death of disco and classic rock concurrently. There were synthesizers, new sounds, and ultimately two tracks that traditional AOR wouldn’t play that won the hearts and minds of Los Angeles, in the process eclipsing what had been and replacing it with something brand new, i.e. “Tainted Love” and then “Don’t You Want Me.”
It started in Los Angeles. Sure, CBGB was the sound of the late seventies, a New York thing, with the two breakout acts, Blondie and the Talking Heads, and a plethora of others, like Television, and the west coast coughed up the Knack and a bunch of new wave popsters, but then the slate was wiped clean by this new U.K.sound.
And once the doors were blasted open…all kinds of things broke through, like Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough,” talk about infectious.
Something was happening here. Actually, it was happening in England, but on the west coast a radio station in Pasadena carried the flag and started a movement that ultimately spread to MTV, were one after another English act broke through and dominated, and the KROQ talent ended up programming the music television outlet and appearing in front of the camera too.
But there was a moment…
This was after the return of ska at the end of the seventies. definitely an L.A. thing.Big, to the point where there were ska acts in Orange C